Guest Virtual Machine (Guest VM)

Definition - What does Guest Virtual Machine (Guest VM) mean?

A guest virtual machine (Guest VM) refers to a virtual machine that is installed, executed and hosted on the local physical machine.

A guest virtual machine is implemented on the local workstation or server, and is powered entirely by the machine hosting it. A guest virtual machine runs simultaneous to the host machine. The two share hardware resources but the guest VM has a separate guest operating system, which executes on top of the host machine operating system through a hypervisor.

Techopedia explains Guest Virtual Machine (Guest VM)

A guest virtual machine has the same functionalities as a physical or hosted virtual machine , having its own operating system, installed applications, processes, input/output requests and other related services. These services are provided by the machine on which the guest VM is hosted, making the VM totally dependent on the host machine for its entire operation. The guest VM can gather its resources from multiple different physical machines at a time to meet performance requirements.